Poor Badger by K M Peyton Page A

their own for two years, since they were seven. Their mothers had taken a lot of trouble to train them to be very careful about the railway and the dual-carriageway, but once across those, they needn’t bother any more, because they only had to cross another field, with cows in, and go into their back gardens by gates their fathers had built in the fence. They lived three houses apart, their houses being in a higgledy-piggledy row of six old cottages, once lived in by railway workers and farm labourers. Now the cottages had been made rather smart, and had had garages built in their gardens.
    ‘What time are you going to see Badger?’ Leo asked, trying out the new name. He stood with his hand on his garden gate.
    ‘Six o’clock.’
    ‘That’s the time I have my lesson.’
    ‘Bad luck,’ said Ros, not unkindly.
    But she wasn’t sorry she would be going on her own. Leo didn’t feel the same as she did about Badger, she knew that. To her, Badger was a fantastic bonus in her unexciting life: she had him to look forward to every day, with any luck, and she could get to know him, and he her, and feed him apples and be his friend. She couldn’t have riding lessons because her parents said they couldn’t afford it. Ros didn’t whine or argue because, with her parents, it never made any difference. Instead, she had imaginary ponies, written down in a book, with names, and she collected pictures of racehorses for her own imaginary string. She went to horse shows, and pretended all the winners were hers, really – she just let other people ride them. She pretended it all . It was hard work. But now, suddenly, there was real Badger.
    Perhaps whoever owned him wanted a rider for him . . . perhaps a kind old man had bought him who was looking for a little girl to exercise him . . . Ros’s imagination started work again. She saw herself, crash hat over eyes, galloping over the fields on Badger. She had never actually sat on a pony, but in her imagination she could ride like the blonde and smiling British heroines of the Olympic games.
    ‘Hey, Mum, what do you think?’
    She crashed into the kitchen and poured it all out.
    ‘How do you know it’s called Badger?’ her mother asked.
    ‘I – we – called it Badger!’
    ‘Oh. Very nice.’
    Her mother was a strict but homely woman called Dora, once a farmer’s daughter. She worked now as a part-time secretary at the local secondary school, and was usually home well before Ros. She regretted not being able to afford a pony for Ros, but she liked animals, and they had two cats, a dog called Erm, some rabbits, and Leo’s wretched frogs in the garden pond. Leo’s mother, Mrs Cross (she was rather suitably named), had refused to let Leo dig a pond in his garden, so he had dug one in theirs instead. Ros’s father Harry had helped him line it with a plastic sheet and fill the bottom with earth and gravel and plant it with frog-cover: water-lilies and reeds from the garden centre. From frogspawn there had been tadpoles, and now frogs . . . it had all been a great success. Leo spent hours in their garden. The cats, having caught a few small frogs at first, now ignored them. They didn’t like the taste. Harry had to be very careful when he mowed the lawn. Leo went ahead of him, anxiously looking.
    ‘I’m going to take him an apple after tea.’
    ‘Take a carrot. Apples cost too much.’
    Her mother found her two large ones, and cut them up and put them in a bag. She showed her how to offer food to ponies, with the palm held uppermost, the titbit lying in the middle.
    ‘He doesn’t bite. He’s very friendly.’ Ros knew about palm uppermost anyway. Grownups were always telling you things you already knew.
    ‘Your father’s going to be late. You needn’t wait for him. I’ll do your tea now.’
    Dora Palfrey understood about things, which was more than Leo’s mother usually did. (Ros liked her surname being Palfrey. It was an old-fashioned word for a